Balanos Vasilopoulos


Balanos Vasilopoulos was a Greek scholar, cleric and author. He made a significant contribution in the growth of Greek Enlightenment during the Ottoman occupation of the Greek world.

Life

Balanos was born in Ioannina, major center of the Greek Enlightenment movement during that time. He was a student of Methodios Anthrakites director of the local Gouma school. As a teacher he initially became director of the school Epifaneios Igoumenos and then the Gouma. Both schools were the most prestigious in Ioannina.
In the Greek language question, he supported the conservative party and the teaching of classical Greek in education. Balanos was accused for this position by Eugenios Voulgaris, a progressive supporter of Demotic. In ca. 1760 his son Kosmas Balanos succeeded him as schoolmaster of the Gouma School.

Work

He expanded and reprinted the work of his teacher Methodios Anthrakites The Way of Mathematics. This was the first handbook in the field of mathematics published in Greek during the Ottoman occupation. He also wrote the following, and various other books of less significance:
Balanos claimed to have solved the problem of doubling the cube, i.e. finding the cube root of 2 using ruler and compasses. He published this in Venice in 1756, and attempted to gain international recognition for his solution from the community of mathematicians, and in particular Leonhard Euler and the members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences. His son Kosmas Balanos rejected the solution in a work published in 1816 after his own death, Αντιπελάργησις. The problem was later proved to be impossible.